Today, with a class from Sandhills PS, we encountered a very unique situation – an Eastern Screech Owl fishing in the stream!
Earlier, we had seen a Mink come out of the forest and slip into a small, open section of the pond, and we decided to investigate. We took a good look at the tracks, but could not locate the weasel, despite our best efforts. During this time, we heard a male Pileated Woodpecker drumming in the distance and decided to try to track it down. As we came around the corner, some movement caught my eye down the by stream. I was shocked to see an Eastern Screech Owl flying from a low perch, landing in the stream belly-deep, then flying back up. It was only about 15m away! We watched it fishing several times. What a wonderful sighting for everyone! It certainly is not something I will forget, and to be able to share that experience with students was really incredible.

Here is a trail cam video of a coyote at Laurel Creek. The trail camera has a 2-second delay before it comes on, so I bet another coyote set off the camera, and it captured the second one trailing behind. There were two sets of tracks in the snow. For the two seconds it is […]

Sunday, September 24th marks the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Laurel Creek Nature Centre. It represents a successful partnership between the Waterloo Region District School Board, the Waterloo Catholic District School Board and the Grand River Conservation Authority. It has been a pleasure to work here for the last 18 years. Happy birthday Laurel […]

A great poem, reproduced with the author’s permission. On Being A Naturalist By David J. Hawke They came here today on a big yellow bus, Another class of students that were booked in with us. I had tidied displays and made things just right, They were just off the bus when two […]

Yesterday evening, after a relaxing dinner on the back patio, I gave chase to a wild goose. Here is how it happened. We live near Laurel Creek (the creek not the Nature Centre) and we we have a couple of parks near our house. Since the spring there have been at least 4 adult geese […]